A Time magazine feature entitled “Gods of Food,” which was published earlier this month, included a “family tree” of nearly 60 important chefs from across the world. The fact that the tree didn’t include a single woman was a big reason the feature became an object of ridicule – and unwittingly provoked a healthy discussion about women’s role in the food and restaurant business, and the lack of credit their efforts receive.

I have no doubt the restaurant industry has a gender imbalance issue. But all last week, as I repeatedly read about the subject, I couldn’t help but wonder: Is New Orleans setting a good example in this regard?

I ask not to suggest that New Orleans is home to any industries free of gender bias. I’ll also refrain from defending the coverage in this particular publication except to say that my immediate bosses in more than a dozen years service here are named Ann, Karen and Jennifer.

But when I stopped to think last week of prominent, influential people in the New Orleans restaurant industry who happened to be female, and who also have received a fair amount of media attention, it wasn’t hard. Leah Chase, Ella Brennan, Susan Spicer, JoAnn Clevenger, Allison Vines-Rushing -- and those are just the names that sprang to mind while watching Sue Zemanick on a Chase Sapphire television commercial at the gym. The list also doesn’t include the rest of the Brennan Family Tree, which if you removed the successful women restaurant professionals, would be pretty bare.

Does the existence of many outstanding and well-known female chefs and restaurateurs say anything about what it means to be a woman in the New Orleans restaurant business? Is it possible that it’s less difficult to rise here than it is elsewhere? Or do local female chefs feel as ignored here as they were by Time?

I really want to know, and I wouldn’t ask me, because I’m in the press, and a guy.